Tuesday, April 10, 2007

What is up with schools nowadays?!

While doing research on the Jerunction Catty High School homepage for the name of a teacher I was trying to think of, I clicked on the "Departments" section of my alma mater.

What a surprise. Here I am, at the ripe old age of 28...still feeling the pain of waking up at 6am, riding the bus, chocolate cake monster cookies with powdered sugar on top, the "green machine" and Mr. Duerr like they all happened yesterday. The suffering of each day, somehow passing slower and slower except on snow days and vacations. The endless hours spent daydreaming in Mrs. Peterson's Honors 11 English class about the way I would decorate my very first apartment, as soon as I was released from this horrible nightmare.

Suddenly, in one frightening moment of this hysterically sad and profound flashback, I realized that something wasn't quite right about this webpage.

Did I accidentally stumble somehow into a portal of OSU's department section?

These pampered little school children nowadays are way too savvy for simple reading, writing and arithmetic classes. As if mini-MINI skirts (compared to official mini skirts of the 60's these babies nowadays should be renamed "nonexistent skirts"), $220 designer jeans, ipods, cell phones, energy drinks and plastic surgery aren't big enough typical accessories to our age 13-18 year olds these days they've got COLLEGE TYPE CLASSES TOO!

Now I am really starting to get pissed.

When I was in high school you were considered cool if you had socks that matched your shirt, Nike shoes for P.E, a new backpack EVERY year and you brought a bagged lunch with pudding snacks or other pre-packaged items. If you had a beeper…you were a drug dealer or a prostitute. No one would talk to you because you were one of the "bad kids". If you wore a tight-ass dress to school and anything that closely resembled skin was hanging anywhere out of that dress you were called a "whore" and most likely people in the cafeteria threw food at you when you walked by. We drove to school in beat down cars bought at the auction, that we were LUCKY to get when we became juniors. They were usually a minimum of 2 colors and sometimes contained pieces from half a dozen different cars that your dad rummaged through down at the demo yard. If you had a tape player…you were the one who drove to Valley River Center after school with a car full of "friends". When you backed into a bush, it cost one can of bondo...not $14,000 like it does nowadays because your spoiled little brat had to have a brand new H3 Hummer.

Nowadays the little childrens are seriously too good for all of this. We've got to make them feel like pre-adults. They need to feel like the world they are living in most closely resembles the "real-life". What is with these damn adults these days?! They sound like a big bunch of freekin' a-holes. And dumb a-holes at that. I want to take them, shake them and smack them in the face.Let us start with Agriculture. "Farm Business Management" specifically. Wow. That's a pretty amazing thing there. But in Jerunction Catty I think it might be a little redundant since anyone and everyone who takes that class already comes from one of the 2 dozen farming families that basically settled the town of Jerunction Catty. You've got a great "in" already on the whole Farm Management thing. My guess is your pampered little, racist, silver spooned hands have been managing border jumpers picking beans on your families property since you could walk. If that's not a life lesson in Farm Management, this class is not going to help out in the least. I don't think there is anything you can learn in this class that your daddy or the show "Dallas" hasn't already taught you.

Which moves me to Business. When I was in high school we had one business class. And I can tell you there was not a single student who I went to school with who knew that business class was about business oriented things. We thought it was about who could make Mrs. Prevics cry first. I can't remember a single thing I learned in that so-called business class. If they had wanted us to learn something in that class, they should have hired a TEACHER instead of that wimpy, shallow voiced lady who liked to cry a lot and interrupt every lesson to yell at someone for doing something or saying something that would eventually make her cry.

Business classes these days are classy, prissy things like "Sports & Entertainment Marketing". Because everybody knows that if you go to school in Jerunction Catty and want to make anything at all out of your life, you damn well better be REALLY fantastic at sports. It's nice though, that all those kids nowadays who AREN'T fantastically good at sports or who AREN'T sons of the athletic administrator can ALSO make a good life for themselves. Being sports and entertainment agents, managers, personal assistants, lawyers, stylists, public relations and so on and so forth. That's super. I guess that means you can write off the 20 grand you spent on clothing for your child for her senior year. After all, these are simply the tools needed for jump starting anyones career in this shallow, vain and overrated sport and entertainment driven world that we live in. I mean after all, without all of these people we wouldn't know what killed Anna Nicole Smith and all the juicy details about Britney Spears' time in rehab!! These are extremely important occupations we're talking about. I am very glad that schools offer these sort of classes.

When I was a senior I took those tests that told you what you were best suited for doing career wise in the event you made it to adulthood. I was so excited the day we planned to receive our results. I just knew that i'd be told, someday...you're going to win a pulitzer prize...a nobel peace prize...you might even have what it takes to be the first female president! Guidance counselor told me that I would be best suited for Truck Driving. I wish that I could say that to be funny because with material like that, i'd be a millionaire stand-up comic. But that my friends, is the sad truth. Me, cut out for truck driving. All those years of brushing my teeth and learning proper grammar...down the drain! All those years I could have been collecting trucker hats and flannel shirts!

But after seeing the new classes offered at my alma mater, I realize that I was not a dummy after-all, the school was just too cheap to let me have any sort of $250,000 a year paying job training class.

Don't even get me started in the department that might have done me a little good. English. English used to be weekly spelling tests, the definition of existentialism and val-i-grams. Now it's "Computer Design" and "Intro to Journalism". No more spelling tests?! You mean that kids nowadays are being pumped out by the millions not knowing the difference between "your" and "you're" but they can design and build a webpage using XML and php like it's making a pop tart?! You mean to tell me that kids down at JCHS have computers nowadays to use for something besides 89' Pagemaker and Oregon Trail?!

That really pisses me off. They should have to learn to type on word processors! They should have to turn in assignments that are hand-written on college ruled paper! They should turn in important book reports and "special" papers with green and white striped paper that smells of chemicals and has ream wholes all up the sides. If they are really adventurous and good little over-achievers they will make a decorative cover page with some sort of classy clip art image to depict something quite wittingly related to the topic of the paper. This is how things should be getting done. Like the old days.

We made peanut butter balls and spaghetti, learned to iron clothes with Wendy's mom (who was also our Home Economics teacher) but nowadays they have "Culinary Arts" where they can learn to become the next Rachel Ray or Giada DeLaurantiis. They make foo-foo things like foie gras and veal parmigiano completely oblivious to the horrendous nature of both of them. They actually have a chance at winning "America's Top Chef", like tomorrow…not just someday when they're big time cordon bleu graduates.

"Consumer Skills" which is probably where they learn that Diesel jeans are so not hot anymore and that Seven For All Mankind are! Because real-life is simply dreadful if you show up to the party wearing Levi's and think your name is going to be on the homecoming ballot.

"Child Development" we did have something like that. It was called "a converted janitors closet way, way out back where no one ever went." If rumors are right, there was a nursery back there and that girls in our school had real-life babies that they gave real-life birth to and that they were back in that room having a "special class" that their babies could also come to. We really just thought that it was the school daycare and these gals were getting school credits for everyday that they didn't accidentally let their kid die.

Get a load of this class. "Medical Terminology". Amazing. I don't even know what half of those words mean. But I've got a hunch they're a jump start on some amazing and good paying jobs in the medical industry. I hope to god that these kids get some REALLY good football scholarships to Lame Community College, because medical school ain't cheap, and I have a feeling daddy's not going to be too happy when he hears you want to be some pansy ass, limp wristed brain surgeon instead of head boss at your family bean farm. For god sakes child that bean farm has been in your family for 29 generations!! How on Earth could you let down all your ancestors like that, you greedy little shit?

When I was in school, the only career path for the nice, butch style lesbian was the forest industry or middle school PE teacher and you mean to tell me, that they can become sports therapists and massage therapists and all sorts of other things with a degree in physical education?

These kids have it SO good. They don't even have to use the stove to make mac and cheese anymore! How convenient that Easy Mac was invented long after I learned to cook. I miss out on everything! Measuring a fourth of a cup of butter and a forth of a cup of milk isn't the part that put me out...it's the whole boiling process that got to me. Everytime I wanted to eat me some mac and cheese I had to waste an entire 7 minutes of my life that I will NEVER get back because I didn't have Easy Mac & Cheese!! There has got to be SOMEONE that I can sue over this!?

I'm very surprised that the music department has not changed since 1913. Still just band or chorus. I don't understand why they aren't offering classes yet on how to apply hair-goupe for that rockstar sticky-up, just got out of bed look, eyeliner 101 (because every good rocker boy needs his eyeliner), emo life learning skills, remixing good songs of the past and selling out for millions of dollars business skills. It baffles me that these classes aren't being offered to the thousands of school children that so desperately need these things. Our schools are suffering my friends when it comes to the arts...

And so, to get on with this long ass story, basically I was shocked to see that my old stomping ground, the source for years and years of therapy and Paxil prescriptions, is now a highly sophisticated breeding grounds for young professionals and other white collar workers. They have surpassed every late 20 something year old out there in knowledge and technology ALL before they can even get into an R rated movie!

We've got a lot to look forward to in the next 10 years. Like the decline of our civilization as we know it. And I haven't even learned to use Power Point yet…that's the bitch of it all.

1 comment:

"In the event that you should reach adulthood." That line is the best. I love that, back in our day, survival in high school was a Darwinian adventure, and nowadays they probably have Xanax dispensers in the bathrooms and therapists on call in Room 1. God I love how freaking old and cantankerous we sound.

About Me

That's not a scowl on my face, I was just born meany-mean. If you don't like what I have to say, don't read it...if you're smart enough you will read it. And then you'll challenge me, everybody knows that Meany-Mean likes a good challenge every now and again.